


the cat's pajamas

by SecretReyloTrash (BadOldWest)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Annette Hanshaw, Apothecary Shop, Cop Hux, Eventual Smut but pretty mild for me, F/M, Rum Runner Paige Tico, Secret Doors, Sexual Tension, Speakeasies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:27:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21675223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadOldWest/pseuds/SecretReyloTrash
Summary: 1920's Speakeasy AU. Rose and Paige Tico have inherited a family business. They run The Tico Apothecary together for it's intended...and off-the-books business. Rose is the engineer behind that secrecy: cleverly constructing a way to hide the speakeasy beneath the floors of her parent's shop.Armitage Huxley is a police officer intent on shutting that business down. He can't help, however, being massively impressed by the ingenuity of the criminal design...
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Rose Tico
Comments: 28
Kudos: 85





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ncboudicca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncboudicca/gifts).



“As you can see, this is a historic building,” Rose Tico brushed her brown-gloved hands across the archaic, but pristinely clean wooden shelves. 

The cop following her kept his face grim like he had been poured a cocktail with too much lemon. Rose knew the face of a heavy pour; but he was as dry as any other who’d been circling this place looking for the secrets these old bricks hid. 

He just let her talk, and that lazy kind of dangling-tactic often made girls swing like the gallows. 

She kept her cool, so far. She knew this place too well to fail it, had grown up in this front saleroom playing with her scraps of wire and metal on the sunny floor since she was a toddler.

This investigation could not be disguised by a more beautiful day. Rows of colorful bottled glittered in the afternoon sunlight. The street outside was as friendly and bustling as always.

Rose was working the counter, so close to closing so she could get started on shelving up inventory.

Paige wasn’t here.

Paige wasn’t here to not even flinch when the bell over the stained glass door of the Apothecary swung open to reveal a police officer coming to inspect the building for suspicious and illegal activity. 

Rose had been keeping her cool. Just barely. 

Doing talking _ \--doing the talking-- _ had never been her strong suit.

“This business was in my family for generations, and to have the legitimacy of such a proud family establishment challenged by _ rumors _ is a grave insult to us all.”

Unimpressed, Officer Huxley barely lifted pencil from notepad as he took his tour of the Tico Apothecary. She was giving it all but tied and at gunpoint: the cuffs and gun were in his belt and the weight of them clearly affected the motion of his pelvis as he took heavy-booted steps beside her. He had to move languidly to keep them from jostling against his hips, she knew, because she walked a similar way when she had her toolbelt on.

“Does this building have a basement?”

She tried not to skip a beat in answering. 

Unlike Rose, her sister Paige was a seamless liar. But Paige was on a rum run and wasn’t here to answer to the police: usually working them so expertly with her calm demeanor and level head that Rose was scrambling to keep up. 

Good thing Rose knew this building backwards and front. She was the one who modified it. So she knew the story behind the cellar, and her voice rose with sureness when she replied:

“Dug out old cellar. We warn people against going down there. It’s a deathtrap.”

He looked as unimpressed with that answer as he had with Rose in her entirety since he stepped through the beautiful stained-glass doors. Her first real job around the apothecary shop was polishing that glass when she was small, sunlight rippling red and blue and yellow and green, every evening at closing while her father counted the money in the register. Ushering the officer through the cheery threshold made his trespassing so vile. She wished she had better, smoother answers. Maybe she should have been better at playing the Moll; in glittering dresses that swathed swinging hips, but instead she was in her trousers and gloves for the day she did inventory…

And the bottles in that inventory certainly weren’t filled with anything to cure toothaches or syphilis. 

This was entirely too glamorous for the day she had planned.

_ Smile. Nod. He knows nothing until you let him. _

Her sister’s words did little to soothe her heavy footsteps. The Moll would click around the tiled floors of the shop on little heels, weave lithely and seductively, but Rose’s boots were as heavy as his officer’s ones and her steps instead thudded glumly from shelf to shelf.

“As you can see, the original moulding…”

“Tell me more about this basement. A deathtrap, you say? I’m concerned then, about it being up to code.”

_ Rats. _

“Pardon?”

She had said it out loud.

Rose coughed.

_ “Rats. _ We boarded it up. It’s most likely disgusting after all these years.”

“Hmm,” the sun ran through his ginger hair, slick with pomade, as he scribbled something very slowly and fervently in the little notebook he had extracted from his pocket. His handwriting was as neat and precise as the rest of him. “I’m hardly here on this visit under the pretence of aesthetics, Miss Tico. If this is a potential danger to the public, I am very concerned about this establishment, and will be examining it thoroughly.”

Rose was distracted, and swallowed thickly. The irritation surrounding his visit was making her careful guard childishly easy to evade. Of course he knew she was hiding something when it was written all over her face that she was still wondering who ratted them out; planning her vengeance for whoever tipped off the police while she tried to field even the most casual scrutiny. 

“I’m sure these silly rumors could be put to rest, if it is  _ exactly _ what I’m looking for down there.”

A person with nothing to hide would be calm. Rose took a deep breath, disguised with a shrug.

“Be my guest,” she stepped away from the shelves to lead him to the stockroom, “it’s a bit of a climb to the cellar.”

One her sister was able to make with a crate of bourbon on one shoulder. Rose too, had learned how to shimmy up and down that ladder easily enough. 

As had a fair share of guests wearing high t-strap heels.

Huxley didn’t leave his spot at the storefront just yet.

There was a large gramophone near the front counter. Instead of following her down, the Officer took out a record from the sleeve and glanced slyly at her. 

“A fan of music?”

“On the right occasion,” Rose swallowed, her palms growing sweaty inside her gloves, “but since you are conducting your search, perhaps we should…”

The music began playing softly, then drifted louder to her ears. In this time of afternoon; it was almost romantic-seeming. But Rose knew the clever trick for what it was almost immediately. Not only did he seem the type to play with his food first: but the music would cover the sound of anything that happened once she led him to the basement. 

Because she’d used that trick to hide the occasional straggling partygoer or the slamming of Paige restocking heavy crates during daylight business hours. 

He smirked cruelly when he saw her cheeks grow pale. A misleadingly cheerful song bounced along the tiles.

_ I'm just a woman, a lonely woman _

_ Waiting on the weary shore _

_ I'm just a woman who's only human _

_ One you should feel sorry for _

He stepped to her so purposefully that she was for a moment convinced he was going to sweep her into a slow turn around the room.

“Shall we descend?” 

It was as though he had been inviting her to dance. 

Well. If he was so willing to lead.

Rose held her courage close to her heart and flattened her woolen cap over her curls. Paige hid her sleek bob under stylish cloches: but Rose grew her hair out not long enough to be flowing and elegant, and not short enough that it couldn’t be tied back off her face. 

“Certainly,” she led him to the small closet after switching the sign on the door to  _ Closed. _

She felt her heart slam in her chest with every metallic clang of bootsole on metal bar of the ladder. 

“Here we have it,” she said, breathless, hoping the sound of her voice would distract him enough to slam him to the concrete floor like a sack of potatoes. He didn’t flinch, but did seemingly take a moment to gather himself at the base of the steps with a slightly red face.

She held her breath as he turned to look around. Shelves loaded with crates, cleaning supplies, old financial forms. 

His breath left him in a dissatisfied hiss, and he went straight to the wall.

Rose tried to keep her body from wincing as he thudded a rapt fist against the surface every few inches, testing the sound for hollow openings. Bottles rattled: but that was all that happened for some minutes.

He ceased his knocking for a moment of shocked silence, having tested every inch of the wall behind the shelves, finding it rock solid. 

The music from upstairs was faint, but the end of the song wafted down to carry Annette Hanshaw’s trademark ‘ _ That’s All!’  _ in a breathy sigh.

“That’s all, then?” he muttered to himself, his tone entirely doubtful. He pushed aside a neat row of dusty bottles.

“At least without the password, that’s it.”

_ Rats. _

His gaze zeroed onto her face. She almost squeaked at the wrath in his eyes. After a moment of silence, another song came into swing, and they were muffled and alone at the base of this ladder once again. 

_ “What was that?” _

She kept silent in the face of his fury. He seemed so unruffled before, but that was just when he felt he held all the cards. 

Paige could lie, but Rose’s designs worked well enough that no one had to.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you implying that there is more to see here, with the  _ utilization _ of a  _ password.” _

“No sir,” she thought fast and swiveled her knee out in a little circle like she’d seen a bouncy flapper do when she was pleading with her boyfriend. “That was just a joke.”

He was already examining the room much more closely than what must have been a procedural inspection for him. He’d clearly though he’d caught her, but this solid wall of shelving wasn’t giving him anything he needed. 

“I want to take a closer look.”

His head tilted back to examine the ceiling, and Rose felt her heart nearly burst in her chest, because he noticed the dept of the room and the wall in front of them and how…

“This wall divides the basement halfway, doesn’t it?”

Rose removed her gloves slowly. Her palms were sweating, but it gave her something to do that seemed more casual than just  _ panic. _

“I don’t know.”

“I know you know.”

His face was completely red. 

Annette lilted so pleasantly up above their heads, lost in the silence between them. 

It was the first time the officer was looking at her like more than something to just slap handcuffs on.

“Do you think I’d talk even if there was something amiss here?  _ Not that there is.” _

He snorted.

Rose leaned up against the shelves behind her. That wall was thick, and he was wrong about one thing: there was no secret opening to the other side. At least, one that could be accessed from this side of the wall. 

But he didn’t need to know about that  _ other _ tunnel.

“We don’t have anything down here but wood polish and some treatments for rheumatism, so unless those are two needs of yours, I need to start closing the place.”

“I know about your  _ operation.” _

“Then think of us the next time you get a cold. We deliver.”

He followed her light steps over to the ladder. She might have been faulted just for letting her small victory get away from her already.

And for lowering her guard.

“Miss Tico.”

And it was maybe the first time he had said her name out loud. 

His gloved hand closed around the ladder rung behind her head. Whether purposeful or not, he knocked the cap off her head, and didn’t move to retrieve it for her when it slapped to the stone floor beneath their feet. 

“Perhaps this is the part where I offer some reciprocation on your end for what I seek.”

“Too late in the game for that, Bluenose, seeing as you’ve just taken what you’ve wanted so far.”

The leather behind her ear squeaked with the death of his grip.

"Your parents died years ago, so this design must have been yours. I can tell from how you go still when I get warmer. I'm intrigued by your cleverness. Let me into the secret and I'll show my appreciation..."

"No," she shook her head, those mussed, unfashionable long curls lashing against her cheeks with the fervor of her rejection's jerky movements.

“Think of what I can do for someone like you…”

She felt her face flush, but bravely lifted onto her toes to meet his gaze and uttered the words that had become some sort of Jazz Gospel for her and Paige since their parents had died.

“No password, no entry.”

But she still let him kiss her. 


	2. Chapter 2

“Anything happen while I was away?”

Paige was slipping her cap off her head, ruffling her bobbed hair with a hand clawed against her itchy scalp before she started to shovel dinner into her mouth. It was a familiar sight, a soothing one, but Rose was incapable of soothing tonight.

“Nothing much,” Rose replied lightly, “Just that a cop was in our cellar.”

Paige, who had barely settled down at the table, almost spat up her mouthful of bun cha. Her driving gloves were still on, so she hadn’t even relaxed yet, but maybe Rose shouldn’t have gone along like nothing was wrong when Paige came home from a run to food on the table as usual.

Her sister’s curls were still ruffled in the shape her hand had molded them to. She always had a tomboyish quality, disheveled, but managed to be gamine and chic about it. 

“Did he  _ find-?” _

“No,” Rose picked at her mother’s embroidered napkins, a wedding gift back from when her parents settled down, “but he’s...curious.”

Curious and determined, since her lips still burned with his kisses. 

The better part of this afternoon was being spent poked and prodded and nipped, her hands clinging weakly to the ladder rungs and a fair amount of begging spilling from both of their lips. Rose was usually by no means this loose, especially not with the cops, but Officer Huxley had a way of finding an opening. She was limp as a ragdoll, or a dropped handkerchief, and he lifted her in his hand like a length of silk and manipulated her so agreeably, it was like he was helping  _ her _ out of a tight spot. 

Paige was following Rose’s dreamy eyes like she was sick or something. All business.

“Is he coming back?”

Sure, Rose had shooed her Romeo out of the shop in time for Paige to miss their visitor, because that would complicate the whole thing, but he’d be back. 

He said he’d be back. If not for anything else, he promised, than for the music.

Would he be back? Did she  _ want _ him to be back?

“I don’t know?” Rose looked guiltily at the meatballs on her plate, mom’s recipe,  _ “maybe?” _

Paige was up like a shot from the table, wiping her gloved hand on her long tweed trousers. Paige only worse dresses to the club, if the situation demanded, but that was still more often than Rose wore a skirt. 

A flirty teal blue number in a shop window she saw last week might make her look like a real doll on Hux’s arm…

Rose shook the daydream out of her head as Paige stumbled around the apartment to the phone. Paige looked ready to punch through the wall when she had to do the whole song-and-dance with the operator to reach her contact.

“Poe? When I make a transaction, I expect to get what I paid for.”

The room was silent as he gave whatever answer he had to that. Rose couldn’t exactly hear, could only look at her sister with her hip leaning against the wall and an expression of malice on her face, “Well we were given no warning about our visit today. I keep you in stock, you keep me in the know. Otherwise, you’re cut off. Christsakes. You’re going to get someone killed someday.”

* * *

The bell dinged: but this was nighttime. Different bell. Different signal.

Rose held her breath from her spot behind the counter. She was the night shift, technically. Guarding the outside and kept safe out of the sins of the inside. 

“I hope I’m not back too soon.”

Huxley wasn’t in uniform. She tried not to stare at his lips for signs that they really had been kissing in that cellar for most of the afternoon, testing out how sturdy that wall of shelves was, but it was hard to keep that discreet. 

He smirked at her, nearing the counter to lean against it to talk to her. He hadn’t done that the first time he came in. Not this casual, leonine way. Not to just talk to her. 

“That depends,” she straightened her chin to look up from her book. The evening rush had at least waned, so she hoped visitors weren’t coming through, “were you properly serviced during your first visit?”

Flirting didn’t come naturally to her: but it was flying out of her mouth now almost like it was easy. She tucked her fringe to the side of her brow. 

“Enough to want more,” he raised his eyebrows, a little delighted that she put her book down. He commanded that much of her attention.

She snorted, “that’s not a very good recommendation for an Apothecary.”

Officer Huxley laughed. It was strange to see him out of uniform. Just in a jacket and pants with suspenders over a clean white shirt. He still had his gloves on, but it was chilly. 

He looked...nice. It would have been very different to have met him looking like this.

Where they were just people. 

“Are you here to search me?”

This may come across as wilder: but her tone wasn’t as inviting. He was still a cop, and he’d still have to turn her in if he knew the slightest thing about the business she co-owned with her sister.

“You say that like I wasn’t being thorough.”

“You…”

She nearly hiccuped in her desperate search for words. He raised his eyebrows, caught her blushing and stammering, and instead of gloating brought the conversation to a pause. 

He selected a record from the stack leaning up against the gramophone and cranked politely until it was playing loud enough to fill the room.

“Did I miss something upon my last inspection?”

A gloved hand came up to squeeze her jaw. His eyes searched her face with a surgeon’s precision. Rose swallowed. 

She was in deep trouble, it seemed. 

“What’s the password?”

“If you don’t know it, you’re not getting it out of me.”

“Then how,” he was surprisingly agile in the next moment, placing his hands on the counter and springing over the side to pounce on the ground beside her, “do you access the speakeasy from the cellar.”

Rose tried to keep from spilling the beans in a frightened panic.

“You don’t.”

His eyes widened.

“Not from the cellar,” he wondered aloud, “then where?”

Rose’s hands clasped protectively over her sternum.

“I won’t tell you!”

“Blast it!” he shouted, and his arms were around her waist in an instant and he smothered her cry of protest with a damned good kiss.

Rose squirmed behind the counter, mostly because he was tall and she was cowering when he pounced on her so the positioning was awkward. Sensing the source of the complaint, he gathered her more firmly in his arms and kissed her soundly: furiously insistent. 

Rose grabbed onto his hair tightly and had no complaints about her feet being swept off the floor for some passionate necking as he lowered her to the floor beneath the Apothecary counter. A firm shove of his knee against the shelves had a small bundle of dried herbs -toothache cure to be brewed in tea- fall onto his back and shower them in a pleasant, garden-y fragrance. 

“Is this how you intend to get information out of me if you just intend to throw me in prison?”

He shook his head, cupping her jaw with cool, leather-clad hands.

“You bewitched me. I have to know your secrets or I’ll go insane. Tell me where you hid the entrance of the club. I can  _ hear _ the band pounding downstairs from up here. It must be a packed house.”

He had a point. The whole floor was vibrating. 

“That’s just the record player,” she protested weakly, but Huxley had pounced on her neck to pepper it with furtive little bites that had her squeaking.

“This isn’t a matter of law: it’s one of curiosity. I don’t care about the laws you’re breaking.  _ I  _ just can’t know I failed.”

“Too...dangerous,” she yelped out as he sucked on her sensitive, ticklish skin. He worked her well. She was very close to letting it all go. But Paige was relying on her. Bottles rattled on the shelves as she trembled beneath his massive frame. 

“You’re clever,” his tongue stroked once, wet, under her ear, dragging slowly down her skin until she whimpered aloud, “and I like you because you’re clever.”

His thumb stroked along her lip, a slow, seductive slide of leather. She almost took it inside her mouth to suck on, and then thought the better of it. 

Panicked, she bit down on his thumb until he yelped. 

Hux was off her like a shot. She felt cold in the naked air of his absence. 

She sat up numbly as he circled behind the counter, trying to wave the pain out of his hand by shaking it vigorously in front of himself and cursing up a storm.

“You...you…”

His eyes were venom on hers, but in a sulky way, not as if he were going to make her suffer but very much resented his suffering. 

_ “You bit me,” _ he had an ounce of whining to his tone: Rose had to hold back an incredulous laugh. 

“You weren’t playing fair,” she snapped back, checking the street to see if any more patrons were going to spill through the door and ruin their cover. 

Hux was red in the face and breathing heavily. Staring her dead in the eyes.

It was strange. He could stay long enough to at least confirm people were looking for the club underneath the apothecary. Yet he was in such a rush. 

“Miss Tico…” he panted slowly after her name a few times, “are you implying that my interrogation method was working?”

“It didn’t work,” she swallowed, a blush forming on her lovely cheeks, “and it won’t work on the second try.”

He crowded her up against the counter with a wolf’s smile, hands on the sleek wood at either side of her waist. 

Hux was seemingly overjoyed at how much she had to crane her neck to look up at him. But she wasn’t going to be afraid. Even this close to his teeth.

“We shall see about that.”

**Author's Note:**

> If this ends up more than 3 chapters please break my legs with a crowbar. 
> 
> Hope neither of these two die in two weeks or I'm never gonna finish this.


End file.
